Airborne doctrine needs some love

[Otto von Saxony]

Airborne has some of the lamest/weakest doctrine abilities right now which really depresses how frequently people play it, and compared to some doctrines like Terror, or Infantry it feels woefully in adequate.

Im going to walk through the different doctrine abilities and give my two cents on them and why they need to be reconsidered. If I have ideas I will also thrown them out.

Prepared Landing Zones:
- There is nothing wrong with this, but it is a bit boring and niche.

House to House:
- This is extremely niche, I can count almost zero times in the last war that ive wanted to throw grenades from a house. Ive played 19 games heavily using grenades too.

Big Boom:
- This is good. Its niche, but at least its a niche that virtually all companies can make use of (destroying bunkers).

Weighted Packs:
- This is good.

Support Teams:
- This is good, a bit niche but adds a lot of flexibility to the company that wants to do note interesting paradrops.

Recon Run:
- Could be good? The muni cost and cooldown really drag this down, rarely if ever see it used.

In and Out:
- This is weak. Pathfinders are only a couple of squads per company, that are rarely in need of an escape mechanism.

Base ball toss:
- Ok, a bit expensive in vps for an ability limited to airborne units only. It would be best for house to house to get merged in to this.

Options, options:
- This is bad. M1 garands are barely an upgrade stationary and are actually worse on the move. At 5 vps its also hilariously overpriced.

If we want to keep the spirit of this, but make it not bad would be to create a new weapon "airborne m1 garands" that have better long range accuracy, say 0.35->0.45 long range and 0.55->0.65 medium range accuracy increase.

If that is not doable because we dont want a stat-change (though this would be a new rifle), then this should be either: not preclude RR purchasing, or provide m1 garands to all squad members and give airborne a static buff, say +10% accuracy. In either case the vp cost should decrease.

I think option 1 is better.

Note: both options are still worse than volks at long range and barely better at medium range.

Boots on the ground:
- I like the idea, basically encouraging you to use more airborne in combination with options. However +1 resupply is a bit weak, Id suggest making it +2.

Medical Supplies:
- Americans already have great healing, so a 5 vp finite healing source that costs nearly as much as a triage kinda sucks. Not sure what to do with this, but its lacking.

Strafing Run:
- This is decent.

[Tommy952]

Much of Airborne doc can only be politely described as being extremely niche. It was designed for a very particular style of airborne play - mass airborne and use of airborne to replace rifles as mainline infantry - which few people actually play with. It is one of the few doctrines in need of pretty major overhaul with many of the abilities just needing to be replaced wholesale.

[Otto von Saxony]

The forum wouldnt let me post this, so I put it in a google doc.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aMvaee6xe8mmU66RZ3H4UgKakR8oyDNe36I4KIP46kM/edit?usp=sharing

[UnLimiTeD]

I believe the whole ability needs to be replaced, or merged with something else to give adequate value.
From what I seem to remember, 2 years ago, we intended to rework pathfinders, allow garands together with other weapon upgrades or replace them altogether, and look into potential buffs to light vehicles, as Airborne players utilizing the mobile nature of their namesake troops will usually prefer mobility.
Also, I am not sure yet, but it might be possible to grant squads flat accuracy. That would actually relatively improve them more on long range. However, long range Infantry should be more of an Infantry thing.

[Otto von Saxony]

I believe the whole ability needs to be replaced, or merged with something else to give adequate value.
From what I seem to remember, 2 years ago, we intended to rework pathfinders, allow garands together with other weapon upgrades or replace them altogether, and look into potential buffs to light vehicles, as Airborne players utilizing the mobile nature of their namesake troops will usually prefer mobility.
Also, I am not sure yet, but it might be possible to grant squads flat accuracy. That would actually relatively improve them more on long range. However, long range Infantry should be more of an Infantry thing.

If we want airborne to be the aggressive mobile doctrine and leave long range skirmishing to infantry (which it is absolutely awful at currently) than we really should just replace Options, options with something else. Adding M1 Garands to airborne units just makes them riflemen but better which encourages them to play identically to infantry but with tankier infantry. This does not seem ideal to me.

My idea behind giving them better long range skirmishing power, stems from how I see Airborne played - as a poking and prodding skirmisher that occasionally commits heavily for a close range offensive. RRs really suit themselves to this kind of game play.

So basically if we want them to be very mobile and infantry more skirmishing focused you inevitably make the two doctrines play very identically. In a sense you would be reversing the typical play styles as well, since, as previously mentioned Airborne is the more poking and prodding doctrine (i.e. skirmishing) and infantry is the very aggressive in your face constant pressure doctrine. At least, if you make good use of the available doctrine abilities for both.

[UnLimiTeD]

Actually, I believe both doctrines should offer both playstyles, with Infantry having a bit more support (and artillery) and airborne having options for deep pushes (and more offmaps).
Just not both at the same time.
Currently, Infantry seems to be nearly exclusively unupgraded riflespam, maybe sometimes rangers or BARs. Really, its not upon me to decide, but Id like doctrines to offer more than one playstyle. We will see in the coming months.

[holoween]

Unupgraded riflespam has always been a thing for infantry doctrine but its far from the only one.
Other strong options are a heavy focus on support weapons or rangers.
BARs are usually not worth it so if you see upgraded riflemen its usually with nades.

Airborne only really has the rr blob supported by some anti infantry.

Medical Supplies:
- Americans already have great healing, so a 5 vp finite healing source that costs nearly as much as a triage kinda sucks. Not sure what to do with this, but its lacking.

you can get 3 mecical supplies for 5mu more than a single triage so its simply better since you can deploy it forward and have easy replacements in case it gets overrun